Filed under:
Analysis / Opinion,
Blizzard,
Hardware
Yes, as you may have noticed in
the update on our post the other day, it's confirmed: NetEase will be taking over
operating the World of Warcraft in China as of June -- their new homebase over there can be found at
wow.163.com. And while we originally reported that The9 would be turning over their software, hardware, and staff to run the game, apparently that's not completely true. IDG News Service is reporting that NetEase will be
setting up their own network of servers to run the game. That's a big undertaking -- it likely means that things will be bumpy for the first few days of the transition (though Blizzard is clearly confident that NetEase can handle it, having run a few other games in the market before). And it also means that
some of the supercomputers we've reported on before that are owned by The9 will go to... well, we're not sure what.
Not that there aren't plenty of things to use them for -- despite their stock dropping on
news of the WoW license loss, The9 also
runs a number of other games over there, including
Guild Wars, Ragnarok Online, and a few more popular Eastern MMOs (not to mention that EA has
a nice stake in them). And at the very least, there's got to be a market for supercomputers with other companies and educational institutions, right? It's unlikely that all that hardware will just sit dark.
But more importantly, it'll be interesting to see how NetEase handles the transition -- we've had
a few inventory and other issues here on the Western side of the world, but we've never had a major loss of character information (cue all of the Blizzard engineers knocking on wood). We're sure there are countless backups in place, but if something goes majorly wrong in the transition between hosts, it could be devastating for the
WoW audience in China.
NetEase to buy all new servers for Chinese WoW originally appeared on
WoW Insider on Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our
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